Rock 'n' Roll (4 page)

She wipes her eyes, fails at a laugh, blows her nose.

ELEANOR
I had Amazons in my doctorate … false etymologies.
Mazos, a
breast;
amazos,
breastless. It makes sense if you're Greek, but the Amazons weren't Greek and didn't speak Greek, so I said the one-breast thing was a language glitch and quite late—nothing about being a tit short in Homer, only killer feminists all round, and vase painters did two-breasted Amazons—case proved, done and dusted. And now this. It makes you wonder. Anyway, I've got my Sapphist showing up …

MAX
(
protests
) You're on sick leave.

ELEANOR
So she's coming here, (
a quick kiss
) It's all right now.

MAX
Eleanor. Um, why did he ask you, the eucalyptuslozenge man?

ELEANOR
You weren't here.

MAX
Why would I be here?

ELEANOR
Oh, and someone from BBC Radio—

MAX
I'd be in College.

ELEANOR
The Czechs have agreed to a temporary occupation, and did you want to comment et cetera?

MAX
(
laughs
) I bet they have.

ELEANOR
Anyway, I said no, you didn't.

MAX
I wouldn't have minded.

ELEANOR
You would. Max Morrow putting the other side … it'd be Christmas come early for every ex-Communist who dreams about you.

Doorbell.

ELEANOR
(
cont.
) That's her.

MAX
Esme's there.

Faint music—the Rolling Stones'
High Tide and Green Grass
album.

MAX
(
cont.
) The ‘other side' needs putting. You can't teach the West anything about occupation.

ELEANOR
That's a bit subtle for some—tanks is tanks and it's on TV, so just do what you did last time when they occupied Hungary.

MAX
What did I do?

ELEANOR
Ate shit and shut up.

ESME
(
distant
) Mum!

ELEANOR
(
bawls
) I know! (
to Max
) I'm a frightened woman. That's all it is. I'm sorry.

ESME
(
closer
) Mum … !

ELEANOR
(
calls
) All
right! (to Max
) It's my Sappho tutorial. Do you mind?

Esme pops in and straight out, wearing a red-leather bomber jacket.

ESME
(
voice down
) Lezzie lesson …

ELEANOR
(
calls after her
) In here!

Remind me to clout her. Do I look all right?

MAX
(
looks
) All present and correct.

ELEANOR
I mean my
face—

MAX
(Oh …)

ELEANOR
—do I look as if I've been crying?

MAX
No. Sorry, I'm (sorry)—(
lettinggo, angrily
) I'm down to one belief, that between theory and practice there's a decent fit—not perfect but decent: ideology and a sensible fair society, it's my double helix and I won't be talked out of it or done out of it or shamed out of it. We just have to be better.

GILLIAN
,
a student who dresses ‘sensibly', carrying books, etc., comes into the garden uncertainly. Max ignores her, goes past her into the house. Eleanor greets Gillian and smiles her into the second chair.

A door slams: Max leaving the house.

Esme's music becomes louder. Eleanor excuses herself and goes into the house. Gillian puts on her glasses and gets out her essay.

Esme's music cuts out.

Eleanor and Esme are heard rowing briefly.

Eleanor returns to her place.

ELEANOR
Right. Off you go.

GILLIAN
It's Fragment 130.

ELEANOR
Eros the knee-trembler.

GILLIAN
(
reads) ‘Eros deute m'o lusimeles donei glukupikron amachanon orpeton …'
‘Eros, once more, loosens my limbs, stirs me, bitter-sweet naughty boy—'

ELEANOR
(Naughty?)

GILLIAN
‘—he steals in.'

ELEANOR
And why not ‘sweet-bitter'?

GILLIAN
‘The interesting word here is Sappho's invention
glukupikron,
sweet-bitter, with no known …'

ELEANOR
Really, Gillian? It's a nice compound, but the
interesting
word here is
amachanon.
Naughty doesn't get near it. What's the root?

GILLIAN
I …
Machan …?

ELEANOR
Right.
Machan.
Think ‘machine' …

GILLIAN
(
confused
) (Think-machine?)

ELEANOR
… contrivance, device, instrument, in a word, technology. So,
a-machanon
—
un
-machine,
non
-machine. Eros is
amachanon,
he's spirit as opposed to machinery, Sappho is making the distinction. He's not naughty, he's—what? Uncontrollable. Uncageable.

GILLIAN
(
bursts out
) But I think I've found a precedent for
glukupikron!

ELEANOR
(
pause
) Really? Try me.

GILLIAN
(
gathers herself
) ‘… Sappho's invention
glukupikron,
sweet-bitter, with no known precedent.
Or is there?
The lacuna in front
of pikros,
Fragment 88a, line 19, is suggestive—'

ELEANOR
Have you been to look?

GILLIAN
Look?

ELEANOR
At the papyrus. It's in Oxford in the Ashmolean.

GILLIAN
No.

ELEANOR
Well, I have. If that's a lacuna I'm a monkey's uncle—

But Gillian has broken—she gathers up her stuff in a rush, failing to keep back her tears, and leaves the way she came … passing Esme entering.

ESME
(
reproaching Eleanor
) Mum …!

ELEANOR
There isn't
time …!

Blackout and ‘It's All Over Now' by the Rolling Stones.

A smash cut to:

Prague. Office interior. A table, two chairs, a coffee cup, a plate of biscuits.

Jan sits facing his
INTERROGATOR,
a youngish middle-ranking bureaucrat.

The Interrogator has files to refer to.

INTERROGATOR
So, Doctor … Have a biscuit. They tell me your luggage consisted entirely—I mean
entirely
—of socially negative music.

JAN
Yes, I'm thinking of writing an article on socially negative music.

INTERROGATOR
(
deadpan
) Really? When our allies answered our call for fraternal assistance to save socialism in this country, thousands of Czechs and Slovaks who happened to be in the West decided to stay there. You, on the other hand, whom we requested to remain in Cambridge for Professor Morrow's … ‘summer—' what?

JAN
‘Teach-in'.

INTERROGATOR
‘Summer titchin', you rushed back to Prague. Why did you come home?

JAN
To save socialism.

INTERROGATOR
I'm afraid you're not taking us seriously. You have one doctorate from Charles University and nearly a doctorate from Cambridge University, so you're thinking two doctors must be cleverer than one official in the Ministry of the Interior. I take it you're Jewish.

JAN
No, that's not what—What?

INTERROGATOR
(
referring to a file
) You left Czechoslovakia just before the Occupation.

JAN
No, in April, for the summer term.

INTERROGATOR
The Occupation. The Nazis. Hitler.

JAN
Oh! Yes. Yes. The Occupation. Sorry.

INTERROGATOR
Because you were Jewish.

JAN
So it seemed.

INTERROGATOR
Well, are you or aren't you?

JAN
Yes.

INTERROGATOR
Right. I don't know why you make such a thing about it. So, a babe in arms, you left with your parents and spent the war in England.

JAN
Yes.

INTERROGATOR
And you came back here … with your mother in January 1948.

JAN
Yes. My father was killed in the war. My mother is still alive, in Gottwaldov.

INTERROGATOR
Strange for you, coming back. A little English schoolboy.

JAN
We always spoke Czech at home in England. And ate
spanelske ptacky, knedliky, buchty …

INTERROGATOR
But you haven't had a biscuit! Help yourself.

JAN
Thanks. Actually, I won't have one.

INTERROGATOR
You
won't
have one?

JAN
I mean, I don't want one, thank you.

INTERROGATOR
Go on, have a biscuit, there's plenty.

JAN
It's all right.

INTERROGATOR
So have one.

Jan takes a biscuit.

The Interrogator watches him eat it, smiling encouragingly.

INTERROGATOR
(
cont.
) Good?

JAN
Lovely.

INTERROGATOR
Lovely?
It's only a biscuit. They're a bit stale, actually, don't you think?

JAN
A bit.

INTERROGATOR
Lovely and stale, then, would you say?

JAN
If you like.

INTERROGATOR
There you are. It's amazing. I can apparently make you do and say anything I want—yet when it comes to something simple, my failure … (
He lifts and lets fall the thin file.
)… is complete. It wasn't much to ask in exchange for the privilege we allowed you … to establish friendly relations with your professor …

JAN
(I did that.)

INTERROGATOR
(
ignoring
) … and make a report on his connections …

JAN
I understand why you're disappointed, but, you know, Cambridge is, well, it's Cambridge, nothing happens there.

INTERROGATOR
How can you say that?

He picks up the thickest file.

INTERROGATOR
(
cont.
) Look at this.

JAN
Well … what is it?

INTERROGATOR
The file on you in Cambridge.

JAN
The file on me?

INTERROGATOR
(
opening the file
) For example, there was a guest lecture by Professor Vitak from Bratislava, and afterwards a small group adjourned to Professor Morrow's house to continue the discussion.

JAN
I put that in.

INTERROGATOR
But not what was said.

JAN
It wasn't interesting.

INTERROGATOR
What is interesting is not for you to decide. Here's another one—a reception at the Cambridge Union Labour Club: evidently you thought it wasn't interesting that a young woman, a Czech student of philology, made negative remarks about our policemen. (
He opens the thin file.
) So what do I read in your report? ‘Party for socialist students at Labour Club. Many toasts to fraternal solidarity.'

JAN
Well—okay—yes—but there was an ethical problem. Well, I'd been sleeping with her … I couldn't possibly … she would have been called home before her finals.